Chancy (1968) Read Online Free Page A

Dunvegan.

    Chapter 3
    Under the low gray sky, under the swollen clouds, our cattle moved westward. The narrow trail led between thickets of blackjack brush mixed with sumac and tangled blackberry bushes, with here and there a clump of prickly pear.
    It was a raw, rough land, brown and sad beneath the lowering sky. The wind worried my hatbrim, and my face was occasionally splashed by huge drops, seemingly out of nowhere.
    Thunder muttered sullenly above the low hills, and lightning played across the sky. I had seen such storms before this, and the dun was not a nervous horse. I had more than a storm to think of, for I was riding among enemies.
    Four days we moved westward, making eight miles the first day, then twelve, then six, and finally a mere five. The cattle were badly strung out, but they were easy enough to handle. There was little opportunity for straying, for the blackjack thickets were almost impenetrable for miles.
    Needful as it was to keep a wary eye for trouble, my thoughts kept straying. If we could get these cattle to market, I could pay my note and have several times a thousand dollars left over. With that amount of money, if I was to handle it right, I could soon be a well-off man.
    It was in my mind to become rich and then return to the mountains and show them what a Chancy could do.
    The saddle is a place for dreaming when there's hours of trail ahead, or when night-herding. And it came over me that to be rich was not enough. A man must win respect, and not the kind that can be bought with money or won with a gun. My pa always taught me that a man should strive to become somebody. He never made it himself, but that was nothing against him, because he tried. He just never held the right cards. With me it would be different.
    I won't claim that I didn't think of being a big man in the eyes of that girl back yonder. Fact was, she occupied a good bit of my dreaming these days, though I'd little enough reason to think I mattered all that much.
    We made camp that night alongside a slow-moving stream with blackberry bushes, cottonwoods, and persimmons all about. It was a good camp, with a fine meadow of grass and firewood a-plenty. But when I rode up to the fire they all stopped talking, as if they had plans they didn't want me to hear.
    Dishing up my food, I sat down away from the lot of them, but before I sat down I swung my holster around between my legs where the butt would be right at my hand whilst eating.
    "You ain't a very trusting man," Gates commented.
    "I've had small reason. But don't forget one thing. You've got half your herd and a thousand dollars coming that you wouldn't have, had I shot any slower. I could have been cold under the grass back yonder.
    "And let me say this," I added. "The drive isn't over. Not by a long shot. There's rough country ahead, and some mighty mean Indians. If we get the herd through without trouble we'll be lucky."
    "Have you been through here before?" Gates asked.
    "No, but I've been through Kansas, and I've talked with men who drove up the trail from Texas. You folks are going to need me--you're going to need all the help you can get."
    They didn't like it much, but Noah Gates was a mite more pleasant for a while. Over coffee he dug at me with questions about the country to the west. Just south of our route was Arapaho country, with Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas not far off. I didn't hold back when I told them of what lay ahead. With the buffalo herds almost gone, those Indians would be hunting beef, and they knew how to get it.
    For the next two days we had good drives, with occasional flurries of rain. It was cold, wet, and miserable, but a sight better than some of the hot, dusty drives I remembered when the heat rising from the bodies of the cattle had been stifling.
    The weather was hard on the older men. Being young and tough and no stranger to work, I did more than my share. Meanwhile, I made a book tally of my stock. A man unused to working cattle might have